Unequal Pay, Social Media Surveillance, & The Moon’s Temporary Friend

September 20, 2024

Hello, readers – happy Friday! Today, we’ll be talking about the election, U.S. healthcare, an unequal pay situation, an almost assassin, social media surveillance, Mark Robinson, and the moon’s temporary friend.

Want answers? We’ve got you covered: 9/16 Quiz Answers. Hats off to Greg, who scored a perfect 10 on this week’s quiz.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Kamala Can’t Get Ahead

(Kamala Harris by Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)

According to national polls, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris outperformed Donald Trump during the presidential debate last week. Unfortunately for the veep, her televised victory over the 78-year-old GOP candidate didn’t move the needle much – Harris and Trump are still neck-and-neck in the polls.

The debate was the second most-watched broadcast on TV this year (behind the Super Bowl), and was viewed as Harris’ chance to introduce herself to the nation. It seems like she didn’t fully accomplish her goal, though – the percentage of voters who said they wanted to know more about Harris was identical both before and after the debate.

One of Harris’ problems right now is a bloc of Democrats who plan to vote “uncommitted” come November. They’re refusing to vote for the vice president because she’s decided to toe the party line in regard to Palestine, refusing to endorse an arms embargo on Israel as part of her platform. Things aren’t going so well in the Trump camp either though – he’s trailing well behind Harris in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, and shares in his Trump Media & Technology Group have begun to tumble as the stock’s largest investors were finally able to sell their stakes in the company yesterday.

A Healthcare Checkup

In an unsurprising new report, the Commonwealth Fund has found that the U.S. has the worst healthcare system among a group of 10 peer nations (including Australia, the Netherlands, and the U.K.). That’s despite America spending almost twice as much money on healthcare as other rich nations. According to the report, the U.S. had the worst access to care and health outcomes out of its peers, and also had the second-worst administrative efficiency and equity of the group.

“I see the human toll of these shortcomings on a daily basis,” said the president of the Commonwealth Fund. “I see patients who cannot afford their medications … I see older patients arrive sicker than they should because they spent the majority of their lives uninsured.”

The Commonwealth Fund’s report shows that most of America’s healthcare problems are tied to its jumbled mix of private and public insurance, which leaves many people behind while piling massive medical debts on those lucky enough to have insurance. In case you were wondering, neither U.S. presidential candidate has expressed any desire to reform the country’s healthcare system. Kamala Harris simply wants to expand coverage under Obamacare, while Trump has “concepts of a plan” to improve the system.

At Least He Doesn’t Have To Worry About Equal Pay Lawsuits

(Keir Starmer by Phil Noble via Getty Images)

According to new reporting by the BBC, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer earns less than his chief of staff, Sue Gray. Apparently, that’s a problem – her recent pay raise has supposedly sparked internal conflict within the ruling Labour Party, and their rivals in the Conservative Party have jumped on the chance to sling some mud at Starmer’s young government. “It was suggested that she might want to go for a few thousand pounds less than the prime minister to avoid this very story,” one source told the outlet. “She declined.”
The optics obviously don’t look good here – especially as Starmer has called for spending cuts in the government’s upcoming budget outline – but Gray’s salary doesn’t mean she’s actually the one pulling the strings at 10 Downing. British ministers don’t get to control how much their advisers are paid, and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds claims that “there are and always have been officials who are paid more than politicians in our system.”

An Aspirational Assassin

Yesterday, Israeli police and intelligence agencies indicted a 73-year-old Israeli businessman named Moti Maman, alleging that he’d visited Tehran twice this year seeking payment for a future plot to assassinate Israel’s top brass, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Maman had allegedly smuggled himself to Tehran in May and August of this year, looking to get a $1 million upfront payment from Iranian leaders in exchange for a future assassination plot targeting Israeli officials. “Iranian agents refused his request and informed him they would contact him in the future,” according to a statement from police. Although nothing came of the meetings, Maman allegedly received $558,000 in euros for his visits to Tehran.

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A Big Dossier On Big Data

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed yesterday that after a four-year study of social media and streaming services, multiple companies had engaged in a “vast surveillance” of consumers. The findings show that the sites collected data and profited off of it by using it for targeted advertising.
The agency looked at nine companies, which operate 13 platforms among them, including Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Discord, Reddit, and more. “Surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” said FTC Chair Lina Kahn in a statement.

Things Are Really Weird In Raleigh

Some weird stuff is going on in North Carolina, and we’re going to try to present it to you with as much tact as possible. A CNN investigation found that (before he entered the political sphere) Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made some pretty…uncomfortable remarks on a pornography website’s message board.
He seemingly referred to himself as a “black NAZI” and a “perv,” and expressed an interest in bringing back slavery (and those are just the comments that we think are fit to print). Robinson denies these comments, but they were made under a username Robinson used frequently online…oh, and he listed his full name and email on the site.

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The Moon Gets A Little Pet

Christmas is coming early this year! This fall, Santa is bringing a second moon to Earth. Our new satellite, a bus-sized asteroid, will orbit the planet from September 29 to November 25 before heading back into space. “The object that is going to pay us a visit belongs to the Arjuna asteroid belt, a secondary asteroid belt made of space rocks that follow orbits very similar to that of Earth,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, the lead author of the study, adding that some asteroids belonging to the belt can sometimes stray close to the Earth, getting sucked into its orbit on rare occasions.
Unfortunately for any starwatchers out there, Marcos says the new moon won’t be visible to most people. The asteroid is “too small and dim for typical amateur telescopes and binoculars” to register. “However, the object is well within the brightness range of typical telescopes used by professional astronomers.” The last time our planet had a mini-moon like this was in 2022, though this asteroid is expected to return to Earth’s orbit in 2055.

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